Chet Faliszek's Departure Shows Valve's Lack of Ambition as a Game Developer

The writer worked on games like Half-Life 2, Portal, and Portal.

By
Noman Ansari

Upon its release in 1998, Half-Life wept the gaming world with its innovative gameplay and fantastic level design and put developer Valve on the map. The sequel, Half-Life 2, set in an atmospheric dystopian world was even more impressive with its excellent gameplay and engaging storytelling. Here at IGN, it earned an exceptional score of 9.7/10.

So good was Half-Life 2 that gamers begrudgingly installed Valve’s software distribution platform Steam, which was mandatory. Keep in mind that this was at a time in gaming culture when DRM was considered so intrusive that it was a deal breaker for many a gamer. What’s more, Steam itself was frustratingly buggy. Yet gamers persisted to simply play the games Valves had to offer.

Valve followed with expansions called “Half-Life 2: Episode One” and “Half-Life 2: Episode Two”, the latter leaving fans on a tantalizing cliff-hanger.

As is now history, Episode Three never came.

At some point there were even suggestions that the story would continue in Half-Life 3, but as this report by Game Informer’s Andrew Reiner suggests, even that is not in the works, and if it is, then it is in such secrecy that a significant chunk of Valve employees aren’t aware of it either.

Around the release of Episode Two, Valve also released the critically acclaimed puzzle-platform title, Portal, which was actually a spiritual successor to the independent game, Narbacular Drop. It was a similar story with Valve’s other releases like Dota 2, which was a spiritual successor to a community created mod for Blizzard’s WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos, the Counter-Strike games, which are also spiritual successors to a community made mod.

Of late, Valve has released fewer and fewer games. The last ‘big’ game Valve launched was Portal 2 in 2011, which followed Left 4 Dead 2 in 2009. The latter was arguably an overpriced remake of Left 4 Dead 1 itself. On the contrary, Steam has evolved into the biggest platform for PC gaming, enough to rival the Xbox and PlayStation ecosystems. By 2015, Steam boasted a total of 125 million active users.

Some now believed that Valve was now more content with nurturing the community and its gaming platform, while harsher critics felt that Valve was simply growing complacent.

To be fair, Valve has continued to experiment, as evident with its dabbling in the realm of virtual reality.

Regardless, fans continued to hold out hope for Half-Life 3, and a new source engine to serve as a launching pad for Left 4 Dead 3, Portal 3, and Team Fortress 3.

These hopes were dealt a blow when Reiner’s source revealed how haphazardly things at Valve function as far as game development goes.

When asked directly about a sequel, the unnamed insider said: “I don’t think there will be any more. But at any given moment, they make decisions as they come. If some people within Valve make something that they collectively feel is exciting, then it will happen. That’s going to be hard for that to happen now.”

While the insider makes Valve sound like an excitingly limitless creative vessel, one can also look at Valve like a rudderless ship. If the powers that be actually wanted Half-Life 3 to happen, it would happen, but it isn’t because there seems to be little leadership in this regard.

The latest news from gamesindustry.biz is that Chet Faliszek, the writer who worked on the two episodes of Half-Life 2 and both the Portal and Left 4 Dead games has decided to move on. This is after the departure of Half-Life 2 writer Erik Wolpaw, and Marc Laidlaw, who worked on Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and was the leader writer of Episode One and Episode Two.

This latest news serves as a major blow to hopes that we will see more adventures from Gordon Freeman anytime soon. As fans of the franchise, nothing would give us more pleasure than to say “Half-Life 3 confirmed”, but it seems like these words won’t be uttered without tongue planted firmly in cheek for a while.

Noman Ansari is the editor-in-chief of IGN Pakistan and can be found on Twitter.

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